Private Crazy Rich Jedi

[Xian Xiao]

Xian slowed when Noriko stopped, boots easing to a halt midway across the bridge. She followed her master's gaze down into the valley, and for a long moment, she didn't say anything at all.

It was… a lot.

The kind of view that made her chest feel tight, not from fear, but from scale. From realizing how small a single person was against something that old and untouched. The mist curling through the trees far below, the river cutting its patient path, the peaks hemming the valley in like a secret the galaxy had forgotten how to reach. It didn't feel like a place meant to be conquered or ruled. It felt like a place meant to endure.

When Noriko spoke about family, about tens of thousands housed within the palace, Xian finally shifted her weight and folded her arms loosely, grounding herself against the cold air and the vertigo that still whispered at the edge of her senses.

"…That's hard to imagine," she admitted quietly. "Not the size. The continuity."

She glanced up at Noriko then, really looked at her, at the ease in her posture and the way she belonged in this height and this space as if the mountains themselves had shaped her stride.

"Most places I've been," Xian continued, choosing her words carefully, "families scatter. Wars, borders, politics, Orders. People leave, or get reassigned, or disappear. You're always told it's necessary. That it's part of serving something bigger."

Her gaze drifted back to the valley, softer now.

"This feels… different. Like the land actually remembers who lives here."

She huffed a small breath, something almost like a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"And for the record," she added, casting Noriko a sideways look, "I am fully believing the half about you being awesome. The other half, I'm reserving judgment on until I survive the rest of today."

She shifted her stance, steady again, and nodded once toward the path ahead.

"But I'm glad you brought me here," Xian said, quietly sincere. "Even if you're absolutely going to make a terrible joke about getting high at some point."

A beat.

"I can feel it coming."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

Noriko looked at her as she moved. "There are nine palaces to the family on Atrisia alone and dozens across the galaxy. Each clan of the family is related by blood but they have adopted and before Matsu made Sasori we always maintained a trade empire that functioned... now we just have a multi-trillion credit corporation we are able to feed into and get a powerful return on. The continued improvements of the palaces here on the planet show that and we are able to have many more." She said it while walking though with a smile and the bridge itself dipped into stairs leading down the spiral of a mountain. Overhangs showing vines and inverted towers carved into the stalagmites.

"Plus think of it like this a family that can date itself back near one billion years is going to have a lot of room to grow and expand and that is before you count schisms in the past like what drove some off to emberlene or tython, made some families go and find other worlds they could be on and not part of the family until much much later." She was looking over all of it and moving aas the inverted towerrs showed birds and monkey like creatures. Noriko descending the stairs a the airr shifted from cold to cool to humid and heavier. "Hmmm this is the good stuff all of that oxygen, heat to make you sweat and things to chase you so you have to run."

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian followed a step behind, boots careful on the spiraling stone as the air thickened and warmed around them, each breath heavier than the last. She listened as Noriko spoke, really listened, but the scale of it kept slipping past anything she had a frame of reference for. Nine palaces. Dozens more beyond the planet. A family that measured its history in geological time rather than generations.

For a long moment, she didn't say anything at all.

Then she let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh, more disbelief than humor.

"I keep thinking I understand what you're saying," Xian admitted, eyes drifting over the inverted towers and living stone carved into the mountain's interior. "And then you add another zero. Or another millennium. And my brain kind of… gives up and starts over."

She glanced at Noriko briefly before looking back out again, as if admitting the thought made her feel oddly exposed.

"I didn't grow up with any of this," she continued, more softly. "No family history. No lineage. No one told stories about where we came from." Her shoulders lifted in a slight, helpless shrug. "I was just…there. Coruscant doesn't really let you belong to anything unless you carve it out yourself."

As the air grew warmer and more humid, Xian flexed her fingers unconsciously, adjusting to the sensation, to the way the environment pressed back instead of thinning away.

"So standing here," she said, choosing her words carefully, "listening to you talk about a family that's older than most civilizations I've ever read about…It's strange." Not bitter. Just honest. "It's like realizing some people are born into gravity wells, and others spend their whole lives drifting until they find something to orbit."

Her gaze followed the movement of birds and climbing creatures among the vines below.

"I'm still getting used to the idea that I'm even allowed this close to something like that," Xian added. "Not as a guest. Not as a footnote. Just…here."

She shook her head once, a faint smile appearing despite herself.

"I don't feel like nobility," she said plainly. "I feel like someone who's spent most of her life surviving, and is now trying to learn what it means to stand somewhere without waiting to be chased off."

Her eyes sharpened again, curiosity winning out over uncertainty.

"But I'm not running," Xian said. "Even if I don't know where all the pieces fit yet."

The smile lingered, small but real.

"So I guess I'm learning," she finished. "One impossible mountain at a time."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

SHe gave a nod of her head to that. "I can understand that Xian, you have taken your firs steps into a larger world and family and also possibly realized that now you can encounter any number of family members throughout the galaxy who will tell the family what you do good or bad deed wise... so if you think me your master won't know what you are doing... you will be really wrong." She said it. "You are also realizing that now when you encounter atrisians in the galaxy and if they are laughing and briefly look your way they might just be realizing who you are as family and all of their whispers and conversations are about you."

Noriko said it as she came to the bottom of the stairs leading into the jungle and the beautiful pathways that went through the trees. The kazue stone made to last as it was interlocked to appear solid. "But don't worry, we aren't giving you over to the family matchmakers yet. We haven't done large scale political marriages for decades maybe centuries but hey you never know." She nodded to that while going. "You might also see men and women in the jungle working or meditating or even just walking so don't be scared they are family. Just enjoy it all." Noriko said it as she was skipping for the moment down the pathways where they could go over with a few other parts of it leading to the palaces.

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian slowed slightly as they stepped off the last of the stairs and onto the kazue-lined jungle path, the shift in air and sound grounding her even as Noriko's words settled in. The idea of being seen like that, tracked not by sensors or records but by people who might recognize her by blood alone, was still strange enough that she had not quite found a place to set it in her mind.

She listened. She always did.

But at the mention of matchmakers, her reaction was immediate and unmistakable.

Her steps faltered just a fraction, and she turned her head sharply toward Noriko, dark eyes wide with something between disbelief and horror, as if the very concept had physically recoiled her.

"No," Xian said at once, the word firm, clear, and entirely unamused.

She shook her head emphatically as if that might banish the idea from the air itself. "No. Absolutely not. That is not happening." Her brows knit together, not in anger, but in the fierce certainty of a thirteen-year-old who had decided something was final. "I am not getting married. Ever. Not now, not later, not as some political thing, not as anything."

She took a breath, then added, more measured but no less serious, "I'm still figuring out who I am. I barely figured out where I belong. I'm not…signing my life away to anyone. Especially not people I don't even know."

The jungle seemed to gently swallow the moment, birds calling overhead, leaves rustling as the path curved forward. Xian resumed walking, shoulders squaring as she settled herself again, though the determination stayed written plainly across her posture.

"I get the family thing," she said after a beat, quieter now, thoughtful rather than defensive. "I really do. And I don't mind being…known. Or watched. That part I can learn to live with."

She glanced at Noriko again, just briefly.

"But I need you to understand this," Xian continued. "I'm thirteen. I'm your padawan. I'm here to train, to learn, to survive, and to figure out how to be a good person in a galaxy that doesn't make that easy." Her lips pressed together, then softened. "That's all I'm thinking about. Anything beyond that is…way too far away to matter."

She looked ahead at the winding paths, the glimpses of Atrisians moving among the trees, and let out a small, almost embarrassed huff of breath.

"So," she finished, a hint of dry humor creeping in despite herself, "if anyone is whispering about me, I really hope it's not about weddings. Because that would be deeply, deeply uncomfortable."

Then, quieter, more grounded, she added, "I just want to learn how to stand on my own first."

Noriko Ike